Pronunciation Book - The Countdown
Ending on September 24th 2013, the Countdown began on July 9th, starting with Day 77. . Breaking Pattern - "How to Pronounce 77" First video in the Countdown is 19 seconds long, six seconds of which are taken up by the same male voice as narrates the hundred other Pronunciation Book videos saying, "Something is going to happen in seventy-seven days". The video breaks the channel's past pattern, as the narrators says more than the words on the screen. Also, the bulk of the video is composed of near-silence as the voice of the narrator ceases and sounds of something like a background hum become audible. The static pops in this 'background noise' were first thought to be fragments of a Morse Code Message, but no sense has ever been made of the results (N O G A G I K A X K). These letter's, known as Jay's Letters, were reportedly gathered by a public google user named Jay__. The Spectrogram In Lieu of a sensical result of the Morse Code Hypothesis, other analysis techniques were applied to the 'Noise' following the Countdown announements. It turned out that the sounds at the end of the Countdown videos were pieces of spectrographic code. Each video presented the code for a single layer of an image. The complete composite of these layers is provided on the right. There is debate as to whether or not the graininess of the image is intentional (meant to resemble a frozen image on a magnetic video tape) or is simply the result of the creator learning how to work the spectrographic software. The wiki "77 Days" has a page devoted to analyzing the Coundown's audio-spectrogram, including the character pictured, allusions in the image that relate to the overall storyline, and links to possibly related YouTube channels with spectrographic elements (found HERE). Narrative Developement - Day 36 Published on Aug 19, the video for Day 36 is drastically longer than any of the preceeding videos. It tells an eerie story that makes absolutely no sense, gives no reference points to fall back on, and hints at things to come in cryptic lines such as "Let's talk about systems soon". Embedded in the imagery of the scenes described in the disjointed narrative of Day 36 are references to everything in the BearStearnsBravo game's opening video, from the 'unwelcome rennovations' to the mentions of the boss and the horrible hierarchy. Retrospectively, there are links in every line to the overarching story as presented by BearStearnsBravo, but on Day 36 absolutely nothing felt solid or sensical. The active narrative continues to evolve as the countdown continues, though most of the videos are substantially shorter than the on on Day 36, with a few exceptions (such as Day 27). Let's Talk About Systems On September 4th, "How to Pronounce 20" was posted by Pronunciation Book at exactly 10am just like every video Pronunciation Book had posted before. Five minutes before the video was posted, this image appeared on tumblr with no warning, and no tags. The number is the 20 in reference to the number on the Countdown, and the line appears in the narrative contained by the Pronunciation Book video. The name Let's Talk About Systems references the Pronunciation Book video from 16 days earlier, Day 36, and the same "P" user-icon as Pronunciation Book's YouTube channel. The text selected to be featured in the .gifs posted from Day 15 onwards form a sonnet, as the 77 Days Wiki explores HERE. :::: Video Royale :::::: The 77 Days Wiki Covers the possible connections between Pronunciation Book and Video Royale, particularly those connections resulting from posts on both channels in connection to the Let's Talk About Systems Tumblr. The Reveal - "How to Pronounce Horse_ebooks" September 24th marked the end of the Countdown. The Final reveal exposed Horse_ebooks as a puppet master element. The first part of the video returned to the original style of Pronunciation Book videos, simple pronunciation demonstrations repeated at varrying speeds and intonations. At approximately 7 seconds into the video, the words slide off to exit screen left, and a girl is introduced. This girl is apparently one of the leading characters in a story with details that the viewers are already very much aware of, despite how an over all awareness of the actual story they are now deeply involved in remains elusive. She cryptically explains the 'world we are in' and directs the viewer to BearSternsBravo, where the more conventionally game-like part of the alternate reality game seems to begin and a lot of the missing pieces are filled in. For a more complete analysis, see the 77 Days wiki. Category:Pronunciation Book Category:The Countdown